Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Part 24

"No. It's not that. The truth is, I've always-" He cut himself off and started to turn away again, then stopped with his side to Elizabeth, his fists clenched. "I have a shameful secret, Elizabeth Bennet. I believe your father suspects, yet I dare not speak of it aloud, even to you... though in you I have found my only hope of overcoming it."

Elizabeth started toward him again. "Master... Geoffrey... what is it?"

She reached out, about to take one of his hands in hers.

"Ahh, Lizzy," Mr. Bennet said as he came around the side of the house. He had a crossbow in his hands and a look of mild surprise on his face. "I thought I told you to sleep in. And here I find you on the lawn in your night things with the sun not up half an hour? Such shameful disregard for your father's wishes! If it weren't your special day, it'd be dand-baithaks till noon. Am I right, Master?"

Master Hawksworth stiffened-back and legs straightening, chest puffing out, chin jutting-until he looked like something out of a Grecian courtyard.

Mr. Bennet had the gaze of a Gorgon, it seemed: It had turned the man to stone.

"Indeed," the Master said. "You rose early, too, Oscar Bennet."

"Not at all. I never went to bed. 'Eternal vigilance'-that is my credo now."

Mr. Bennet and Master Hawksworth shared a long, silent look.

"Shall I have Hill bring out some hot coffee?" Elizabeth said. "You both seem to have fallen asleep standing up."

"Not a bad idea, Lizzy. But it's one, I'm afraid, for which we have not the time." Mr. Bennet stepped swiftly up to Hawksworth and then swept past him, bound for the stables. "Come, Master. We must away to Meryton to collect Ensign Pratt and his men. We'll need their help if we're to see our plans through."

"What of my help?" Elizabeth said. "Surely, there is some part in your plans for me."

Her father stopped and turned toward her, nodding gravely. For the first time, Elizabeth noticed a red smear high up on his left cheek, and his hands and cuffs were speckled with tiny dots, as from a spray of crimson liquid.

He hadn't just been watching for dreadfuls that night. He'd met with at least one.

"Of course. There is a task of vital importance that you and only you can undertake," he said to her. "Go back into the house, go up to your room," Mr. Bennet c.o.c.ked an eyebrow, then grinned, "and lay out your best gown. Then let your mother and sisters spend the next twelve hours fussing over your hair. After that, you are to travel to Netherfield and dance the night away in the company of your sister Jane and whatever respectable gentlemen the two of you might coax into your webs."

Mr. Bennet looked up at the second-floor windows-and the three young faces peering down from them-and threw his arms wide.

"On this, Elizabeth's special day, I release all of my daughters! From this moment on, you are not warriors! You are again young ladies! Revel in it however you would!"

And with that he left.

CHAPTER 31.

"REVEL IN IT however you would." That's how Elizabeth's father told her to spend the day of her coming out. Which was cruelly ironic, since it was he who'd cast a pall over the ball and all her preparations for it.

Mr. Bennet's sudden, strange change of heart about his daughters-releasing them from their training just as the peril of the dreadfuls seemed about to peak-plagued Elizabeth the whole day. Was he doing them one last kindness before calamity struck? Was he shunting his loved ones out of harm's way? Or was he simply trying to come between her and...?

Oh, bos.h.!.+ There was nothing to come between.

Right?

Elizabeth's misery was compounded by her mother's bliss. If something made Mrs. Bennet happy, it was virtually guaranteed to be a disaster in the making. And Mrs. Bennet had never seemed happier.

She hummed as she and Lydia pinned up Elizabeth's hair and wove in pearl beads and ribbon. She sang as she and Kitty laid out the necklace, earrings, bracelets, and brooch with which Elizabeth would soon be festooned. She giggled as she and Mary played tug-of-war with Elizabeth's bodice, the mother pulling down in favor of "display," the daughter pulling up in defense of "decorum." And when all her labors were done and Elizabeth was at last a vision of loveliness-or Mrs. Bennet's vision of loveliness, at least, for Elizabeth had taken no more of a role in her own dressing than would a porcelain doll-she laughed and clapped her hands and declared her to be "radiant, entrancing... why, almost as pretty as Jane!"

To Elizabeth's relief, Mrs. Bennet was alone in her oblivious good spirits. It was nothing new to see Mary moping around looking sour, but eventually even Lydia and Kitty lost interest in their mother's fussing over Elizabeth. By midafternoon, they were half-heartedly sparring with yari spears out on the front lawn. For weeks, the girls had longed for a day without training, a day they could devote to gossip and mischief and dreams of their own b.a.l.l.s and gentleman callers. And now that they finally had such a day, they seemed so bored they'd welcome a horde of unmentionables with open arms.

Elizabeth was tempted to grab a spear and join them, and her restlessness grew so acute she asked her mother again and again if they might set out for Netherfield early so as to check on Jane. Yet Mrs. Bennet poohpoohed the idea every time. "His Lords.h.i.+p doesn't need us barging in just as he's getting to know your sister," she'd say. Eventually, however-when she had been stuffed into the last of the various layers a lady must keep between herself and all others-Mrs. Bennet announced that they'd be leaving Longbourn ahead of schedule, after all. Her old acquaintance Capt. Cannon had extended an invitation for a tour of his encampment, she said, and now seemed the perfect time to accept his gracious offer.

Soon after, she and Elizabeth were waving good-bye to Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Mrs. Hill as the Bennets' carriage rolled off. It was a bright, warm day, yet though Mrs. Bennet prattled on about its beauty, for Elizabeth the suns.h.i.+ne merely meant the shadows of the surrounding woods were all the darker and more impenetrable by comparison. Indeed, she couldn't stop staring off into the trees and bracken, and several times she thought she caught a blurry flurry of movement and a whiff of putrescence upon the air. Once, when turning her head, she even got a glimpse of a small, childlike figure peering back at her from behind a tree. But by the time Elizabeth again focused on the spot where it had been, she saw nothing, and she could but conclude it had been a phantasm conjured up by her own overstoked imagination. All the same, her palms itched, and the back of her neck tingled with something that should have been dread, but was not.

As they neared Netherfield Park, they could hear the occasional pop of a distant gunshot, and when they rounded the final bend before the main drive they found themselves confronted not by a single sentry but a picket line of five, all with their muskets raised.

"Halt!" one of the soldiers shouted.

The driver pulled back hard on the reins and the horses reared, nearly sending Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet flying out of their seat.

"h.e.l.lo again, Private Jones!" Elizabeth called out. "Perhaps you might remind your friends that unmentionables don't make a habit of traveling by coach."

"Hasn't anyone told you there's to be a ball tonight?" Mrs. Bennet added. "You can't stand out here waving guns at the cream of Hertfords.h.i.+re!"

The soldiers lowered their Brown Besses and made way for the Bennets' carriage.

"Begging your pardon, Madam." Pvt. Jones started to tip his black, tall-peaked cap, then seemed to realize this wasn't something soldiers were supposed to do. "It's just everyone's a bit on edge around here. We've had three more of them on the grounds, y'see-and one even slipped through the lines last night and got into the house, though no one can guess how."

Mrs. Bennet gasped.

"Was anyone hurt?" Elizabeth asked.

The soldier shrugged. "They don't share the details with the likes of us. We're not even supposed to know that-"

"Go on! Go on!" Elizabeth snapped at the driver, and with a crack of the whip the carriage jerked off toward the house. Elizabeth jumped out and ran inside before the wheels had even stopped turning.

The baron's gray, wraithlike steward, Belgrave, appeared out of nowhere to block her path as she crossed the foyer.

"May I help you?"

"My sister. Miss Jane Bennet. I must see her at once."

Belgrave took on the dead-eyed look of quiet condescension peculiar to servants in manor houses. "I don't know if that's possible."

"Why? Is she-"

"Lizzy? Is everything all right?"

Elizabeth looked up and saw Jane and Lord Lumpley standing side by side at the top of the stairs.

She heaved a sigh of relief, which turned to a cringe of embarra.s.sment when her mother popped through the door after her.

"Ah, there you are, Jane!" Mrs. Bennet said. She paused for a hurried curtsy. "So sorry to barge in like this, My Lord, but the soldiers out front put us in an absolute tizzy with their foolish gossip! I should have known they were talking nonsense. Just look at this house! Why, it seems a shame even to walk on the floors, they gleam so. No dirty old dreadfuls here. They wouldn't match the decor, I imagine. La! Well, what are you waiting for, dear? Come down and give your mother a kiss before you show her the ballroom."

"Yes, Mamma." Jane turned to the baron and, to Elizabeth's surprise, managed to look him square in the eye. "If it pleases His Lords.h.i.+p?"

Lord Lumpley beamed benevolence. "Of course. I think I can survive a little while without my Amazon. I need to retire to my chambers, at any rate; we've been so busy with the preparations for the ball, I've barely left myself two hours to get properly dressed." The baron offered Elizabeth a smile then turned to Mrs. Bennet and, though the smile withered, at least managed to suppress his grimace. "If you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask my man Belgrave."

He took his leave with a shallow bow to Lizzy and Mrs. Bennet and an "Until tonight" to Jane.

"Ooooo," Mrs. Bennet cooed when Jane joined them at the bottom of the stairs. "You've got your hooks in deep, I can see. I always knew you'd marry above us, but who could have guessed how very high?"

"Mamma, please," Elizabeth said. Though Belgrave had departed not long after his master, she couldn't help feeling he lingered behind somehow, unseen yet unmistakably present, like a musty smell or a draft of cold air. "Keep your voice down."

She might as well have been Mary for all the mind her mother paid her.

"Is Lord Lumpley to thank for all these pretty baubles, then? As if your beauty didn't s.h.i.+ne brightly enough already. Tonight it shall be blinding!"

Blus.h.i.+ng, Jane put a hand to the gold, gemstone-studded choker around her neck. Elizabeth had never seen it before. New, too, were her sister's earrings and kid gloves and dancing slippers. The gown, though, was one Jane had brought with her from Longbourn (as was, of course, the sword that slightly crumpled the skirt on one side).

"His Lords.h.i.+p let me borrow a few things that his cousin, Lady Wellaway, left behind after her last visit," Jane explained. "He rather insisted on it, actually."

Elizabeth didn't care for the color on her sister's cheeks or the hint of a curl to her lips, but whatever they might mean, that could wait.

"Jane, was a dreadful loose in the house last night?"

Jane nodded, her face falling. "No one knows how it got inside. It killed one of the servants and a soldier before I, well, I rather split it in two."

"Oh!" Mrs. Bennet huffed. "Can't we talk about something else? Who put up your hair, dear? They did simply marvelous work with the curls!"

"Was it a male?" Elizabeth asked. "Fairly fresh?"

"Just the opposite. It was a girl, quite decomposed."

"And would you just look at those beautiful bangles," Mrs. Bennet said. "Do they belong to Lady Wellaway, too?"

"A girl? So it wasn't-"

Elizabeth caught herself just in time.

"So it wasn't Mr. Smith?" she'd been about to say. She could just imagine explaining "Mr. Smith" to her mother. Mrs. Bennet was desperate for her daughters to meet eligible males, but Elizabeth suspected even she had her standards.

"Have you seen Dr. Keckilpenny this morning?" she asked instead.

"Yes," Jane said. "I finally met the good doctor at breakfast."

Elizabeth let out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding.

"He didn't stay to eat with us," Jane went on. "He simply loaded a plate in the kitchen and went back to the attic. The cook said all he took were pastries and desserts-along with some uncooked kidneys and tripe." She shook her head. "A strange young man. Nice, of course. But strange."

"Doctors," Mrs. Bennet snorted. "They're all strange, if you ask me. Who'd want to spend all their time around sick people? And I've never known a one who had more than four hundred a year. Now, solicitors, there's a sensible bunch. Or, better yet, barristers. Or-"

"Tell me, Jane," Elizabeth said, c.o.c.king an eyebrow. "Were there any other unwelcome callers in the night?"

For once, Jane looked as if she would have preferred pursuing her mother's line of conversation.

"Yes... in a way... but it wasn't like that." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "The baron's not as bad as you think, Lizzy."

"Believe me, Jane: He's not as good as you think," Elizabeth replied. "No one is."

Yet Jane looked unconvinced.

Soon after, Cuthbert Cannon and his Limbs came rolling/striding in, and it was quickly decided that the captain would see to Mrs. Bennet's entertainment while Elizabeth helped Jane prepare for the ball. It was a somewhat surprising arrangement: Capt. Cannon surely had better things to do, and Mrs. Bennet was pa.s.sing up the chance to do worse by insinuating herself into the baron's household or playing Cupid for her daughters. Yet Elizabeth was too grateful to be free of her mother (and the constant danger of shame she posed) to ponder long on the oddness of it all.

She spent the next hours with her sister seeing to various lastminute details on Lord Lumpley's behalf. Jane had been appointed the baron's proxy, apparently, and it fell to her to make the final decisions on the placement of the orchestra, the arrangement of the card tables, the tartness of the punch, the ratio of grapes to apples in the fruit bowl, etcetera. In addition to being a great honor, this was a great responsibility. Everything in the ballroom and the drawing room and the long portrait-lined gallery connecting them had to be just so, and one servant after another came to Jane for direction, or simply glared at the upstart girl who dared to play mistress for the day.

Yet through it all Jane remained her usual agreeable, serene self. Elizabeth, however, found each new triviality rubbing her nerves more raw. What should she care about the desperate shortage of oysters or how to keep the Lumbards from mixing with their mortal enemies the Maydestones? Especially when she could look out any of the huge windows in that wing of the house and see soldiers drilling with muskets, hammering boards together into what looked like s.h.i.+elds, marching up the road bound for who knew where or what?

"Oh, sod the Cotswold!" she finally snapped when Jane took a little too much time deliberating over the proper arrangement of the cheese plate. "And sod the ruddy Wensleydale, too!"

"Lizzy!"

Elizabeth clapped her hands over her mouth, hardly believing what had just popped from it.

"Oh, Jane. Forgive me, please," she said when she could finally trust herself to speak again. "It's just... I find myself feeling so... so..."

Whatever she was feeling, it didn't come to her in anything so simple as a single word, and she had to get at her meaning another way.

"You're supposed to be the baron's bodyguard, not his master of ceremonies. For heaven's sake, can't we leave these trifles to Belgrave and the other servants?"

Jane reached out and gently took one of Elizabeth's hands in her own.

"Don't think I'm not frustrated, as well, Lizzy. Papa, Master Hawksworth, little Ensign Pratt, LieutenantTindall-they're all out there in harm's way so that we might stand here trying to keep the Stilton as far as possible from the Brie. It was our father's wish that this be so, however, and we can only a.s.sume there is some intent behind it, for how often has he made decisions unwisely or without due consideration?"

"You mean other than when he married Mother?"

Jane gave her sister another reproachful look.

"Yes, I know. You're right, of course," Elizabeth sighed. "I just wish I knew what Father was up to and why he felt it necessary to be so secretive about it."

"I suspect we'll have answers to both those questions soon." Jane gave Elizabeth's hand a squeeze, then turned back to the cheese plate. "Now, I'm beginning to incline to your way of thinking on the Cotswold. It's altogether too bold, isn't it? Perhaps we could have someone check the larder for a block of Gloucester."

Presently, Lord Lumpley returned with what proved to be impeccable timing: He came downstairs after all the necessary arrangements had been made and just before the arrival of the first guests. Elizabeth thought he actually looked rather good in his black coat and breeches and silvery silk vest, though he moved with a stiff-backed stiltedness that suggested his corset strings had been pulled especially tight for this night. Mrs. Bennet and Capt. Cannon reappeared then, as well, both of them looking cheery and flushed from their tour of the grounds.

This, then, was the de facto receiving line when Belgrave escorted the Goswicks into the ballroom. Mr. Goswick was actually able to bluff out an almost-convincing show of grat.i.tude to the baron for "a.s.suming patronage of the ball." But Mrs. Goswick and her daughter Julia-who, like Elizabeth, was to have her coming out that night-looked as though they could barely resist pinching their noses.

"You've taken off your scimitars, I see," Mrs. Goswick sniffed to Elizabeth and Jane. "Well... I suppose they would get in the way during the dancing, wouldn't they?"

She led her daughter and husband off to the opposite side of the room, where they could keep company with the only truly respectable people present. Themselves.

More familiar faces soon followed, and the expressions upon them quickly grew quite familiar: strained graciousness for Lord Lumpley and Capt. Cannon, ill-concealed disdain for all the rest. Even Elizabeth's own aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Philips, were less than warm, and the couple quickly scurried away to the refreshments table, where they pretended to admire the tasteful arrangement of the cheeses.